User:Kendal/Project Proposal

https://pad.xpub.nl/p/klbprojectproposal

What do you want to make?

A physical rental agency that leases virtual space in exchange for creative projects.

With modernisation and a push for categorisation of the internet, early fringe virtual communities were pushed out in favour of walled gardens like Facebook. The digital spaces reflect a form of a non-place, created with the idea of this is what the internet could be in the future. Instead these worlds were abandoned and serve only now as a snapshot of the past.

Take a physical non-place like a mall. These spaces were created as a utopic glimpse into the future and now lay silent and dated, completely a product of the past. How can we activate these digital equivalents as space for creative experiments and making? If we can occupy these spaces as temporary autonomous zones, can we breathe life into the disused? Can we explore the difference between the virtual and physical world and how we can adapt to create in this environment?

How do you plan to make it?

I want to create an agency that is reminiscent of a housing website but instead of offering physical space, it will rent 3D virtual environments of the early 2000s. I am planning to build a physical office installation and website that both showcases the spaces, and explains what these early iterations of virtual worlds offer in a creative context to form small publishing moments.

What is your timetable?

Please include a timeline of what needs to be done and the order in which those things will be done.

December & January Research and gather the userspaces and affordances of each virtual world I plan to 'rent' (max 9 spaces)

January & February I then have to define a structure of the renting process and what could be offered as rent conditions. (questions of ownership)

March I have to build the website (probably most time consuming)

May & June Finally I need to gather the building materials and office supplies to build the complete office installation including a store front.

Relation to previous practice

How does your research connect to previous projects you have done? Here you can use the descriptions you made during the Methods seminar or make new descriptions. Your Text on Method will also be useful in completing this section.

Relation to a larger context

Meaning practices or ideas that go beyond the scope of your personal work. Write briefly about other projects or theoretical material which share an affinity with your project. For example, if you are researching urban interventions, you might want to research about Situationist approaches to psychogeography, urban tactical media and activist strategies of reclaiming the streets. Or, if you want to explore the way data is tracked, you might touch upon the politics of data mining by referencing concerns laid out by the Electronic Frontier or highlight theoretical questions raised by Wendy Chun or others. (Keep in mind that we are *not* expecting well formulated conclusions or persuasive arguments in the proposal phase. At this juncture, it's simply about showing an awareness of a broader context, which you will later build upon as your research progresses.)

References

A list of references (Remember that dictionaries, encyclopedias and wikipedia are not references to be listed. These are starting points which should lead to more substantial texts and practices.) As with your previous essays, the references need to be formatted according to the Harvard method.)

Feel free to include any visual material to substantiate, illustrate or elucidate your proposal. For example use images to reference your work or that of others.